The Legacy of Balthazar

An ancient and powerful alien civilization, all but destroyed by a celestial impact millennia ago. Now, after thousands of years, their plan to rebuild their race is nearing fruition, and it's happening here, on Earth. In the near future, the world is running out of known deposits of fossil fuels. Dr. Amanda Johnson, a brilliant, beautiful, and extremely tall computer designer and programmer, has been recruited by DARPA to design a satellite based scanning system to locate any hidden carbon reserves on the planet. This system, based in Phoenix, Arizona and called AUGER, will also be re-tasked to continuously track all nuclear materials once the carbon scans are completed. Amanda''s fraternal twin brother, Tyler Johnson, also brilliant and extremely tall, is a world traveling archaeologist, working with their adoptive parents Gordon and Ashley Jameson. Tyler is aware of Amanda's carbon based scanner system, and asks her to use it to search for small carbon deposits that may lead to previously undiscovered archaeological sites for him to excavate. Amanda agrees, and, using Majel, a computer A.I. that she has developed, and that Tyler has, unknown to her at the time, modified, she finds several thousand potential sites, one of which is most unusual. A large cube shaped object buried in North Carolina. After informing her brother, he and their parents go to investigate. What they find will change their lives, and the world, forever. Amanda and Tyler embark on an incredible journey that will take them as far away as the surface of Mars, and even to other dimensions. Along the way they will encounter aliens, suicidal terrorists, nuclear weapons, and even rogue elements of their own military. Difficulties which pale in comparison when they discover that they, Amanda and Tyler Johnson, are themselves another world's Legacy.